Okay, so I tried to find the spells to explain that comment, and apparently Pyroblast! (the proc) isn't a separate spell any more? It was in Cataclysm. Looks like they removed Hot Streak and built the proc into the base spell. Nevermind.

WOW-CN has announced on its official blog that in 5.1 it's realms (WOW-CN realms) will again separate 10/25 raid lockouts. Normal and heroic modes still share the same lockout, but you will be able to do the 10-man once and 25-man once in the same week.

Furthermore, 25-man loot will again have a higher item level. As an example, it cites that Endless Spring will drop 496 in 10-man and 504 in 25-man.

The Korean realms also has the same announcement. Don't know whether the US/EU realms will get the same stuff.

I need a big amount of popcorn for the QQ that will ensue when this is publically announced in EU/US.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

We have received comments from many players regarding raid instance lockouts, as well as the difference between incentives for participating in the 10-man and 25-man raids. We appreciate the feedback from our players, and we understnad that people from Taiwan, Korea and mainland China wish to have more flexible choices while participating in the more challenging contents in World of Warcraft. After much careful consideration, we have decided to make changes to raid lockout mechanisms on all Taiwan, Korea and mainland China realms in patch 5.1. Raid lockouts will still reset every 7 days during the weekly maintenance. However, 10-man and 25-man raid instances will no longer share the same lockout.

Players will be able to participate in each of 10-man and 25-man sized raid instances each week; for example the Mogu'shan Vaults. Normal and heroic modes still share the same lockout. In addition, 25-man raid instances will become more difficult in future, and of course boss drops will be better than 10-man drops. For example, 25-man Terrace of Endless Spring will drop item level 504 gear, while 10-man normal mode will drop item level 496 gear.

The purpose of this change is to provide the players in Taiwan, Korea and mainland China with a game system that is fun, rewarding and at the same time meeting their needs.

END OF TRANSLATION

Obviously, these announcements are drawn up by Blizzard US, then translated by each local agent for publication. The wording will change slightly. For example, the Taiwan announcement clearly states "Taiwan, Korea and mainland China", while the China announcement only states "China realms". This is because they insist Taiwan belongs to them, it is common practice for them to omit Taiwan in such texts.

From the text it is hard to say whether it will be universally applied to the US and EU realms. Perhaps Blizzard is experimenting with running a different set of rules for the Asian realms. This is not a first, as the billing for WOW in Asia has always been different, it is only natural that they try to provide a more "localized" environment to boost their "subscription" here.

Mozen wrote:Obviously, these announcements are drawn up by Blizzard US, then translated by each local agent for publication. The wording will change slightly. For example, the Taiwan announcement clearly states "Taiwan, Korea and mainland China", while the China announcement only states "China realms". This is because they insist Taiwan belongs to them, it is common practice for them to omit Taiwan in such texts.

From the text it is hard to say whether it will be universally applied to the US and EU realms. Perhaps Blizzard is experimenting with running a different set of rules for the Asian realms. This is not a first, as the billing for WOW in Asia has always been different, it is only natural that they try to provide a more "localized" environment to boost their "subscription" here.

However, we must consider there have been several posts during the last days of Cata where the developers were clearly unhappy with 10 men having ended easier to handle than 25, and 25 not being rewarding enough to incentivate players to try them..

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

World Firsts are not tracked by blizzard, altho they can always check when stuff dies to confirm what actually died first, but they dont consider the world first race to be anything more than their final beta testing.

Worldie wrote:However, we must consider there have been several posts during the last days of Cata where the developers were clearly unhappy with 10 men having ended easier to handle than 25, and 25 not being rewarding enough to incentivate players to try them..

Two things the announcement confirmed for us:

1. 25-man version will be more difficult than 10-man content. In other words, 10-man will end up easier.2. 25-man version drops higher iLv loot. That's making up for the rewarding part.

I suppose they've changed their minds about the difficulty difference.

One thing that should be known while reading this particular announcement, is that the TW agent is only a distributor, they have no rights to touch any part of the game. Unlike China, where the government have a say in any and all publications, Taiwan is a free country not unlike the US or Britain. We don't do stupid things like patching up Patchwork. Anyways, the point is that any and all changes to game mechanisms have to come from Blizzard US. They may accept input from the TW agent, but ultimately they make all the decisions.

I wouldn't be surprised if a few hours later the same announcement goes up on the US and EU sites. Although some people are speculating that Blizzard is using the Asian realms as a test-bed first and they won't touch US/EU realms until this proves effective.

How would reducing the ammount of people in a raid fix things?There are always going to be guilds out there with the "wrong" ammount of people.People are just saying "change the raidsizes" cause the grass is always greener.

I think 10man and 25man work pretty well together.10man and 25man are NOT the same, in any way, even listing 10man and 25man together in the same sort of progress is fucking retarded, they are 2 different sports.Its easy to say that if they would make it all over again, they would do it differently, problem is that you can get away with anything saying that, and it has 0 impact on anything.

Some people say they want 20man cause then its easy with balancing cause its just twice as many as 10man, so you just put x2 on everything right?But no, its never going to be the same, more people means more complexity in the raid.It is two different sizes, 2 different games people are playing, stop trying to make them equal and start making them evolve their own way.

Not gonna go into a discussion about 10man vs 25man and what is harder, but just getting together 25people should almost give you a reward.I honestly liked the ICC approach.There were 25man for the 25man guilds, and there were 10mans for those who didnt care for the whole "server best" or anything, it was just to kill time and have fun with friends.I know its bad to generalize, but pretty much everyone I know who plays 10man, plays it cause they enjoy the simplicity of having 10 close friends playing, rather than be in a noisy 25man guild with people you dont really know or care for.If that is the case, why do you care about 10man beeing harder OR easier than 25man? thats like complaining archery is much easier when you are bowling.

Mozen wrote:One thing that should be known while reading this particular announcement, is that the TW agent is only a distributor, they have no rights to touch any part of the game. Unlike China, where the government have a say in any and all publications, Taiwan is a free country not unlike the US or Britain. We don't do stupid things like patching up Patchwork. Anyways, the point is that any and all changes to game mechanisms have to come from Blizzard US. They may accept input from the TW agent, but ultimately they make all the decisions.

I wouldn't be surprised if a few hours later the same announcement goes up on the US and EU sites. Although some people are speculating that Blizzard is using the Asian realms as a test-bed first and they won't touch US/EU realms until this proves effective.

Yeah, the thing that's got me wondering on this all is the point that 25 man will become harder. That requires rebalancing the raid content, not a small task. Would they work on 7 different difficulties (LFR, 10N, 10H, 25N, 25H, TW25N, TW25H) of the same instance?

You know, there is a strong following on the TW realms behind one theory: that the only thing to change is the 10-man content & loot on Asian realms. They just nerf the 10N and perhaps 10H content right from the start for the Asian realms, and apply their gear scaling technology to the loot to make them a lower item level to start with.

This way, the race to World Firsts will more or less be "fair" even if the US/EU realms don't change.

Just to go the other way from Treck here - pretty much everyone I know that goes for 10 mans does so because its a bitch recruiting and keeping a roster 25 man viable, unless you are already en established good (raid)guild (even having been one and having changed at some point - wrath due to GM/RL stopping in our case), there are simply too few people on a lot of realms to have more than one 25 man - if even that (in the case of several 10 man guilds).

The format chose has less to do with how hardcore or casual you are, and more to do with how many people you can reliably recruit (I'll point to Paragon, even if their recruitment problem is more than likely self-induced by the finnish required).

if it comes to Eu/US: damn you blizzard,my guild struggled to survive as 25 up to the end of normal-DS,now that we have crashed down to 10m (like most of the guilds out there) we get changes...I could be less annoyed if not for all the "10m vs 25m is fine" BS we got during cataclysm...